A Compendium of DIY Pinwheel Love

I was recently reading a post about pinwheels over at $2000 Wedding, and ever since I’m been stark raving mad about paper pinwheels.  There is something so utterly romantic and playful about them!  And I feel like they have so much hidden versatility, not to mention their absolute customize-ability and cost-effectiveness!  So far, I’ve come up with 10 potential ways to use them, many of which could save you considerable cash:  

  

- Have guests waive them in lieu of bubbles, rice or birdseed when sending you off! 

- Incorporate them into floral centerpieces. 

- Or, forget the flowers altogether and use a bunch of pinwheels AS the centerpiece! 

- Write guests’ names and tables on them, and use for escort cards. 

- Top cupcakes with mini-pinwheels for a playful cake table. 

- Leave them on the kids table for the young and young at heart. 

- Tuck them into the napkins at each place setting for a whimsical favor. 

- Give them to your flower girls to carry during the ceremony instead of a basket. 

- Put your pinwheels on extra-long sticks and plant them in the ground for a festive aisle runner. 

- If you really want to get creative, you could even make your invite with instructions for how to turn them into pinwheels. 

  

Anyways… I clearly have no life… if you want to learn how to make your very own adorable pinwheels, the blogosphere is filled with great tutorials!  I’ve compiled some of my favorites to share but if you know of more, I’d love to hear them!  What would you do with pinwheels at a wedding?   

via Paper Source

via BHG

via Intimate Weddings

via Style Me Pretty

via Once Wed

 

Vintage Linen Love

As part of my home improvement focus these days, along with my always-important focus on doing projects in a budget-friendly way, I’ve been trying to look at the things I own with fresh eyes and think creatively about repurposing.  And as a collector of vintage linens (but only really cute ones on the cheap, or heirlooms from my family) they are an easy thing I always like to repurpose.  So last weekend, I decided to tackle two of my throw pillows.  Originally, I had purchased the throws from Pier 1 but they were looking a bit ragged and I wasn’t sure they had long-term potential.  So I took the covers off, stowed them with old fabric, and decided to recycle the pillow forms.

For new covers, I went through my old fabrics and my linen closet.  I was so excited to rediscover two old cloth napkins from my grandmother’s estate- they are made with gorgeous, quality linen and have pretty cutouts and embroidery.  I had a pair, but I definitely wouldn’t ever use them for dinner because I only use cloth napkins for company and two isn’t enough for a dinner party.  Moreover, I would hate to stain such pretty pieces with pedestrian dinner food.  And with that inspiration was born!

Next, I went through my fabrics, and located some old green linen curtains which I had custom-made myself for an oddly shaped window when I lived in NYC- and no longer use.  I decided they would be perfect paired with the linen napkins.  Using the old pillow cases as my guide, I made a pattern, cut the fabrics and then quickly stitched the seams on my sewing machine.  I think they work great with our summer quilt (a sale splurge from Anthropologie, my reward to self when I got a bonus this year).

Ok so back to weddings… vintage linens are so versatile- they really can be used all over the place for weddings.  Here, I used vintage napkins but vintage hankies are also great to work with.  Of course everyone has seen those gorgeous examples of hankies-turned-invites like these:

Or you could wrap a bouquet with vintage linen- I did so with my grandmother’s hankerchief but fabric from an old wedding gown, or anything else meaningful would be a nice touch!

And of course one of my personal favorites, the hankie-turned-ring pillow!  I just love this one from AK Collections on Etsy!

Or even vintage fabric bunting hung for a festive touch.

Anyone else have any good ideas for incorporating vintage linens into wedding plans?

Dollar Store Ingenuity

No matter how much my relative economic status improves in my life, I never stop loving the dollar store.  Between Jack’s 99 cents store here in NYC, and the Christmas Tree Shop I visit in the ‘burbs, I find inspiration and ideas everywhere!  So imagine how excited I was when I discovered a contest that strikes right at the heart of my dollar store love over at Living with Lindsay!  Lindsay has challenged readers to come up with a Spring decor item for less than $5, and the readers have responded!  Head on over to see the great ideas folks have had!  Oh oh oh, the love.  Here are my current favorites, all of which seem perfect for bridesmaids gifts, shower or wedding decor:

Spring vignette from 320 Sycamore

Silhouette bird plates from Frugal Flourish

Vintage inspired calendar from The Paisley Pair

Apothecary Jars from My Swanky Crafts

Nikki's tea cup bird feeder

Lindsay's petal-fringed tea towel

Paper doily garland from Decor to Adore

Do you have any favorites?  What would you make?

Newlywed Nesting, Notsomuch

Most people who know me, know that I’m a die hard fan of home improvement projects done on the cheap.  In fact, nothing makes me more excited than working on a project for our home… I devour the blogs until I find the perfect look, then I shop for bargain materials, learn techniques, and go!  For example, we added our fireplace mantle to the living room for about $150, but it would have cost $1,500 to have the local professionals do the same exact thing (with the same exact mantle).  All it took was some google searching for the right supplier and some high gloss paint.  J. and I also did our own marble kitchen backsplash by scoring clearance tiles from Expo when it went out of business.  They didn’t have enough 2-inch tiles, so we got a box of 4-inch tiles too and figured out how to stretch the materials.  I made a plan on graph paper, J.’s cousin came over with his tile cutter, and for $150 in supplies and a weekend’s work we had a new marble kitchen backsplash!

Unfortunately, I can’t do any more nesting for a while, which is really too bad because I’m in full-swing-newlywed-nesting-mode.  We’ve been trying to sell J.’s house for the past 4 months to the tenant who lives there- she is a lovely woman- but unfortunately the sale fell through on Friday.  And so we’re now trying more aggressively to sell my big girl house.  I have to believe that somehow, this will all work out, but it’s incredibly frustrating to now know where we are going to be.  I am a planner, and not being able to make plans for my home is making me nuts.  But for now, home improvement projects do not make sense.  Maaaaaaaaan.

But a girl can dream!  In an effort to get my design fix, I’ve resorted to blog love.  Check out these great blogs I’ve recently discovered, with their incredible offerings!  You’ll probably notice these are very ”me” (lots of vintage, eclectic, cozy, with a substantial dose of country and only a touch of modern/contemporary) but there’s tons more out there for every taste and style.  Please go forth, nest and share so I can live vicariously through you!!

320 Sycamore:  Check out her little makeovers.  Or her recent $5 dollar store spring vignette. 

Apartment Therapy:  An old favorite!  With craigslist finds, madeover furniture, and lots of reader feedback, this place is like an encyclopedia!

Better After:  Spectacular projects, before and after!

A Country Farmhouse: Self explanatory and brilliant.

Kelly and Olive: Design inspiration at it’s best.

Frugal Farmhouse Design: This author has killer taste and great ideas.

My Repurposed Life:  This blogger takes trash to treasure in simple, genius ways! 

Anything Pretty:  So much loveliness in one house, it’s hard to believe.  I wish I was as good with woodworking as Jenny!

Life as a Martha Wannabe: I feel like I myself could have a blog with this title.  But I love this one so much, I don’t need to!

Young House Love:  So much adorable cuteness, so little time.

Preserving Some Special Details

Ok opinion time.  I’m not a huge fan of doing too much decorating in one’s house with wedding stuff.  Going overboard with that kind of makes you look like you don’t have a life.  Sure, dry your bouquet and hang it in your bedroom, but please do it tastefully!  Nobody wants to see it collecting dust next to a pile of books.  And while I’m at it, I maintain that one really gorgeous framed wedding photo is so much better than 100 in bad frames (I’m not saying we all need to limit ourselves to just one, which I certainly won’t, but it doesn’t have to be 100- grandma and grandpa didn’t have 100 photos of their wedding out, and they were alright).  And for goodness sake, please don’t line up a whole bunch of wilted pieces of paper on a shelf.  You have to remember, nobody else loves this stuff as much as you do.

But.

I loooooove shadow boxes.  My MIL made one for my SIL after her wedding, using fabric from the dress, a program, bouquet flowers, etc.  It was an absolutely lovely and tasteful way of displaying those little mementos in a way that won’t collect dust- and allows the beauty of the objects to shine through!  So of course, making shadow boxes was exactly what I wanted to do with some of the goodies I had leftover from our wedding.  I’m also working on a scrapbook, but that could take years to complete, so in the mean time I have these to enjoy!

Our invitation, with roses, greenery and eucalyptus from the bouquets and one of the bridesmaids' birds!

Our program with more flowers and greenery, my grandmother's Irish linen handkerchief which had been wrapped around my bouquet, a cookie cutter favor (in the shape of a snowflake for obvious reasons) and an extra boutonniere. This one lent itself to a few more things!

Ok I admit, these photos don’t really do the shadowboxes justice.  But check this out:

Me: hey hon, what do you think of these here in the bedroom?

J: What?!  Why don’t you put them where people can see them?

Me:  Do you think people want to look at our wedding stuff, really?

J:  Are you kidding they are sweet.  You seriously should put them downstairs!

Me:  *speechless*

Yeah, that is right, my super manly man husband just insisted I put the shadowboxes out.  That means they must be good.  Oh and by the way, I got the frames at the Christmas Tree Shop for $5.99.  You can find bigger versions, or versions with different colored frames, at Pottery Barn and Michael’s but they won’t be $5.99.  Just another reason I’m proud of these little guys!

Furthermore, these were really, ridiculously easy to make.  The boxes come with push pins and have soft backing, so it is easy to pin the objects into the box for display.  You don’t even have to get out your hot glue gun!

The shadowboxes make their public debut!

What ideas do you have for preserving wedding mementos?

Guest Book Sneak Peek

Today is a short and sweet post, because I just so happen to be busy getting ready to get married! 

But I couldn’t just leave you hanging!  So here’s a sneak peek at our framed photo-guest book.  We took one of our favorite shots from the engagement session, blew it up on metallic paper (which does amazing things for the colors) and had it framed at Michael’s with a 50% off coupon (which was still expensive, but slightly less so with the coupon).  Michael’s did a great job, and even agreed to leave the glass out so people can sign the mat at the reception; afterward, we’ll bring it back to have the glass put in.

We have a “wedding wishes” book which will be put out with this photo too– the wishes book has cards in it where guests can write us a note if they wish.  For both items, I purchased archival quality pens, so that there won’t be fading years later.  I think its going to look great!

Naming the Tables

Now that J. and I are starting to get closer to the wedding, I have been focusing on wrapping up easy projects that can be done in advance so that it can all be done by the week of the wedding.  So one of the easiest things I have gotten out of the way is making signs for various wedding elements.

The first set of signs I made were our table numbers.  J. and I have done a bit of moving around as adults,  so early on, we decided to name the tables after places we have lived.  It seemed like another easy way to add personalization to the wedding.  So I hit my local dollar store and came up with a plan.  Now I admit, I’m very fortunate to have a dollar store with an entire aisle of scrapbooking supplies, which is where I found gold rub-on transfer lettering in a lovely font!  I ended up buying ten packages along with a supply of cream colored card stock, and used both for many other wedding elements too.

source

I also found inexpensive gold frames from the same store at 2 for $1, so I snapped up 16 of them.  The quality wasn’t great, but it didn’t have to be for this project, so I decided not to worry about it.  I set to work as soon as I got home, first applying the lettering to plain white card stock to spell the names of places.  I then cut out the table name and applied it to a rectangle of gold wrapping paper I had on hand using my trusty glue stick.  Finally I added a third layer of cream card stock and put the whole thing into the picture frame.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

(PS, sorry about the photo quality, it was raining when I took the pics and the lighting was terrible!)

Are you doing anything nontraditional for your tables?

Just Married!

Potential Option 1: 1937 Packard Limo

Potential Option 2: 1933 Packard Convertible (we’ll keep the top up, thankyouverymuch)

All car photos courtesy of my dad (visit his website here!)

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Reserved Seating

I’m going to keep it real with you.  I know full well that we, the bride and groom, do not need signs to enforce reserved seating at the sweetheart table of our own wedding.  But there are lots of things we don’t need, and it never seems to stop me.  *grin*

Check out these adorable versions of seating signs that other brides have come up with!

source

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DIY Winter Wedding Poms

Have you seen this bright and happy trend that is sweeping the blogosphere?  Pomanders in the aisles!  Made from anything from tissue paper to flowers, they always add a pop of classy color to an aisle!

source: Weddings By Color

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